Don't Hate the Player

by Alexis Nedd

  “That thing you said about this game being your choice,” she continues. “I wish you could have made it without keeping it a secret. I’m not saying we would have let you do it if we had known, but I understand that impulse.”

  “You do?” I can’t think of a single reason my mom would understand where I’m coming from. She’s super-mom, always on the PTA, always making sure I’m top of the class, all-supporting, all-dazzling, always. What could she know about wanting to try something unexpected?

  “My mother never left Vieques, you know. She sent me and your titi Bea to live in Philly when we were teenagers. We didn’t have a choice. We had to make money and get married. There were so many times when I told myself I should do something different, go to college, maybe get a degree, but I didn’t. You’re supposed to have more choices than I did. I see so much of me in you.”

  For the first time, the idea that I might be like my mom doesn’t make me roll my eyes.

  “There’s your father in there too; he’ll never admit it, but when he showed me that computer you built, I almost had to pull him down from the chandelier. He was so impressed. You’re both workaholics. And nerds.”

  I knew it! Dad was proud of me. Horrible circumstances, but it still feels like a victory. When I smile, I feel the salty film of my dried-up tears cracking on my cheeks.

  “I didn’t understand that in trying to give you more options with what to do with your life, we were restricting you from choosing what those options might look like. I didn’t put it together until that boy downstairs brought it up.”

  The boy downstairs. There’s a boy downstairs. Is the boy downstairs?

  My mom laughs out loud when I jump up from the bed. Totally involuntary movement, my legs just feel like someone shocked every muscle with a cattle prod. The charge carries up to my heart, setting it to a frantic, pounding beat that I’m sure Mom can see through my T-shirt. Jesus, my T-shirt. It’s gross! I’m gross! No, I washed up in the bathroom. Did I put on deodorant? No, why would I? I didn’t know there was a boy, potentially my boy, downstairs.

  “Mom,” I say as calmly as I can with a body biochemically primed for skydiving, “who is downstairs?”

  “I didn’t catch all their names; they’re a real motley crew. Penny’s with them. She brought your homework. We talked for an hour before I came up to get you. Didn’t you hear the doorbell ring?”

  Oh, she’s enjoying this. Mama Romero, or Coach Romero or whoever’s sitting on my bed today, is always two steps ahead. I don’t know who’s waiting for me downstairs, but whoever they are must have worked something far more powerful than necromagic on both of my parents. Mom didn’t come up here to punish me; she wanted to hear my side of the story.

  “Romeros don’t lose . . . ,” I say quietly.

  “We don’t. Emilia Romero stinks, though, so I’ll give you a few minutes to change. Hamster cage, I’m telling you.”

  Well, what am I supposed to do about it now? Once Mom leaves my room, I rip my T-shirt off and run to my closet. The irony of suddenly having too many choices is not lost on me. Mom didn’t say outright that Jake was downstairs, but now that she’s opened up the possibility, I know it’s true. I know it was him. No one else could have told her how I feel because no one else knew! Here’s a shirt. It’s blue, whatever. Bra first; don’t want to show up tits akimbo in front of Jake and Penny and whoever else is down there (Matt?).

  By the time I stuff my legs into a clean-ish pair of leggings, I can smell coffee brewing downstairs. One peek under my window shade shows me it’s late afternoon, which makes it a weird time for coffee, but I’m not going to complain. Dad defaults to making coffee for guests regardless of whether they want some or not. They’re lucky he hasn’t started stuffing chunks of cream cheese and guava jelly into premade pastry; he’ll send everyone home with snacks if they give him enough time. I should put on mascara. That will look very obvious. Jake doesn’t care about mascara. Or maybe he does. He’s never seen me without it.

  Forget it, I’m too excited. I half run, half stumble down the stairs and turn toward the kitchen, and that’s when I see them. All of them, up close for the first time.

  Bob’s legs are so long that his feet touch the ground when he sits on the counter-height stools on one side of our kitchen island. Ki’s are not; her tiny feet are swinging above the ground as she cranes her neck to watch my dad make coffee with his sock drip. Penelope is sitting on the third stool, swiveled partially around to face the people sitting at the kitchen table. I have to step in farther to see who’s there. Penny, looking serious. Matt, looking lost but happy to be here. Mom, spreading out a pile of homework across the kitchen table, and, of course, the boy downstairs.

  Jake has his glasses off to clean them on the corner of his blue Unity jersey—they’re all wearing their jerseys—so he doesn’t notice me until he puts them back on. When he does, he smiles. Hello, Jake’s dimples. I missed you.

  “Em,” he says. The room goes quiet. “Sorry I couldn’t come soon—” He stops when Penny shushes him. Every eye turns to Bob. The last time I saw him, he looked like he was trying to summon enough laser power in his eyes to burn me alive, but when he swivels his stool around to face me, his handsome face is fixed in an expression of cool appraisal.

  “Emilia Romero, aka KNOX,” he begins dramatically. “I’m Bob Quince. This is Kiki Kim, Penelope Howard, and I’m told you know Jake Hooper.”

  I lock eyes with Jake across the kitchen. I haven’t talked to him since he left me a message on GLO right after Round 3 saying Unity asked him to steer clear of me until the tournament was over. That seemed fair then. It’s clearly a moot point now. Jake puts a finger to his lips. Shush and listen, Emilia. I comply.

  “We each have certain . . . ​skills. Damage, healing; I’m a tank.” Bob presses his hand to his chest.

  “Yeah, you are,” Ki mutters under her breath. I see Penelope gently swing a foot out to kick her under the counter.

  Bob continues as if he didn’t hear Ki. “I’ve had my eye on you. You’re a top-tier DPS, specializing in ranged damage, necromagic, and some of the most impossible-looking team combos I’ve ever seen.”

  Over Bob’s head, I see my parents staring at him like a whole Martian just beamed down in the middle of their kitchen. I bet he told them he had a speech but didn’t tell them what he was going to say. Totally related: I think I love Bob now?

  “I’m putting together a team,” Bob says. But he already has a team. They’re literally right there, two healers, a tank, and—where’s the other guy? Their second DPS. Muddy, Jake told me his name was Muddy. Unless he’s hiding in the kitchen island, Muddy isn’t here.

  “Recent circumstances have left me with a place on that team for someone who looks a lot like you. Miss Romero”—Bob pauses for effect—“I’m here to talk to you about the Unity Initiative.”

  For a second I think I’m going to cry again, but the whole kitchen breaks out into applause and shocks me into laughing instead. They’re clapping for Bob, who slides down from the stool to shake my hand.

  “I have always wanted to say that. Look at my arm; I gave myself goose bumps. Hi, I’m Bob. Sorry about the highway, by the way. Jake explained everything. We cool?”

  Words are difficult right now. I can just about handle nodding while sneaking a glance at my parents, who are pretending to look busy behind the island but are watching me intently.

  Matt sees how confused I am and takes it upon himself to start explaining. “So. I was having a normal one on Tuesday when this guy”—he jerks his thumb over at Jake—“comes up to me in the library saying he’s gotta find Emilia, Emilia isn’t texting him back, yada yada . . .”

  Penny jumps in: “And Matt was, like, no one can talk to Emilia, her parents are keeping her away from school to be safe, she’s probably not gonna be at school for a few days. But Matt texted me, and I was like ‘hey, I’m bringing Emilia’s homework on Friday, so if you want me to bring her a message I could make a little
something happen for our boy Jake, if you know what I mean.’ ”

  “I didn’t,” Jake adds, “know what she meant. I just needed to talk to you. When I heard about the dox and Fury, I wanted to see you so—to tell you something.” He glances over at my parents, who didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He didn’t tell them about us. Which makes sense; there is no us yet. Is there going to be an us?

  All I know is it’s fantastic to hear Jake’s voice again. I want to turn his voice into a lotion and rub it all over—Wow, I have been massively undersocialized for the past four days. I am 100 percent feral.

  Matt’s talking again, thankfully diverting that particular train of thought. “Anyway, Penny told me to talk to Jake about talking to her about talking to you. Turns out he had something more than a message to bring you.” He gestures broadly at Bob, Ki, and Penelope.

  “Hi, I’m Penelope. You can call me P. Unless you call her P.” Penelope points to Penny, who shakes her head. “No? Cool. Jake got us all to meet in Philly on Wednesday and told us his plan: we group up, piggyback on Miss Penny’s homework trip to make sure someone answers the door, and make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  “It was actually my idea to offer you a spot on the team,” Ki adds. Tiny, bossy, pink-haired, and pretty. I love her already.

  “They showed up on our doorstep at three forty-five talking like they had an appointment.” My mom puts one mug of coffee in front of Bob and another in front of Penelope. “Penny was with them, so I knew they weren’t from the bad internet.”

  “My guess was carolers,” Dad adds, bringing coffee to my friends at the kitchen table. “Then I remembered it’s October. Then I thought: Halloween carolers.”

  “Okay, that’s genius, Mr. Romero,” Bob says. “I’m stealing that. Doing it next year. Watch me.”

  “Uh, can I come?” asks Penny.

  This is surreal. It’s entirely possible that I’m still in my bed thinking about Egyptian burial methods and spiraling into a wild hallucination where Jake’s GLO teammates are best friends with my parents. I still haven’t said anything. That’s definitely a sign this is a dream; I never talk in any of my dreams.

  “Em, why don’t you sit down.” Jake got up without me noticing and—if this is a dream, it’s a great one—takes my hand to lead me to an empty seat at the kitchen table. His hands are sweaty again, and I love it. Damp hands for life, sign me up.

  I find my voice once I’ve sat down. “I still don’t know what’s going on here. You all got together to ask me to join Team Unity? That’s not . . . Don’t you already have a guy?”

  Team Unity exchanges an uncomfortable look.

  “About that,” Bob begins.

  “No, Jake should tell her,” Ki blurts out from the counter, then addresses me. “It’s a long story. You’re gonna hate it.”

  Mom sets a glass of water on the table before returning to Dad’s side behind the counter. Thanks for remembering, Mama.

  “I’m sorry, Em,” Jake says. This time I think he really is. “Muddy—our DPS—convinced Byunki to dox you. He found out you and I . . . know each other. He thought I was jeopardizing the team and jumped ship to Fury knowing they’d think the same thing about you.”

  Jake looks nervously at my mom, who I’m sure got an abridged version of this story earlier and is getting the equally abridged recap now. I can read between the lines, though. Somehow, Muddy knew about me and Jake. I’d often wondered what Byunki would do if he found out, and now I have my answer: he’d betray me in a fucking heartbeat.

  You’d think a week of processing the fact that Fury dropped me when I got doxxed would prepare me to be less angry at the revelation that the team I’d sacrificed so much for was a bunch of turncloak bastards, but I don’t work that way. I put the glass down on the kitchen table so I don’t squeeze it to death and grip the sides of my chair instead. Byunki may have made the call, but everyone else on Fury went along with it. Ivan could have quit when he knew Byunki was going to hurt me. Han-Jun and Erik could have tried to make him see reason. They didn’t, and even if they tried, they failed me.

  “It’s my fault, Em. I let too much slip and blew it up again,” Jake says quietly.

  “No,” I reply less quietly. “You were—you’re the . . .” I take a deep breath to force the anger out of my voice. I’m furious, but not with Jake, or Unity, or even with myself. Muddy screwed him over too. I know where to aim my fury. “Rotten people are never your fault, Jake. It’s not your job to fix what’s bad in them. You’re so good; I wish I could trust people like you do. I can’t be mad at you for that.”

  I feel a sweaty hand reach into my lap and gently squeeze my fingers. Jake doesn’t have to say anything else. It’s super cool being real friends again, or more, who knows? No one’s ever diverted an esports coup to my doorstep before, but if that’s a love language, I’m pretty sure I speak fluent Jake.

  “We all trusted Muddy for too long,” Bob agrees. “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine for thinking we could work on him. I owe Ki and P an apology too; they weren’t his biggest fans from the start, and I’m the one who asked them to try harder.”

  “Apology acknowledged,” Penelope says. “You’re gonna work on listening to women, though.”

  “Hear, hear,” my dad interjects. “I’ve undone most of that little punk’s damage, by the way. Got that whole forum taken down. The pictures they had were from Wizzard’s tournament photographer, so I worked with the company to ding the posts for copyright violation. That Thibault guy is nice, took my call as soon as he knew what I was calling about.”

  Uh, holy shit, but I’ll need to save the story of how my dad got on the phone with Thibault Adige for later. We still have details to discuss here, and I need to make a decision about Unity.

  “They’re helping us keep you safe,” my mom says.

  “That’s good,” I say, still high key stunned.

  “We want you to be happy,” she continues, “but you also messed up. So like I said upstairs, you are the most grounded child in America.”

  “The most grounded,” Dad echoes. “You live in the ground now, as our mole daughter.”

  “Except . . .” Jake looks up at me. Whatever embarrassment he was feeling has obviously passed.

  “Except for next Saturday,” Mom admits. “The blue shirts said they need you in this tournament, and I will not let the people who tried to hurt my baby come out of this thinking they won.”

  Jake can barely contain his grin. Penny and Matt are smiling too. A quick look over my shoulder shows the rest of Team Unity looking nervous but ultimately beaming. Everyone from every facet of my life is here, smiling. Happy for me. I never thought I’d see them together, let alone happy for me about the same thing.

  “If you do win, the money is going into a savings account for college,” Dad adds. “We have some money saved to help you either way, but there is a student loan crisis in this nation and—” Mom cuts him off with a glare.

  Listen, I’m with Dad here. Even when I thought the pot was 200k split five ways, I was going to put the money toward college.

  “Only if you want to,” Jake says suddenly, because he’s just remembered the most important part in all of this. “It’s your choice, Em.”

  “If you could make up your mind in the next thirty-eight minutes, that would be great,” Bob calls out. “The deadline for submitting an alt to Wizzard is, like . . . ​well, it’s in thirty-eight minutes.”

  Thirty-eight minutes? I need negative two. Mom and Dad are giving me a nod of approval, and lord knows I’m not going to be doing anything else for the foreseeable future. For now, I only have to say one thing.

  “I’m in if you are.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  New Team Unity, One Week Later, Friday

  BobTheeQ: Ladies and gents, that’s a wrap on our last practice!

  shineedancer: any notes?

  BobTheeQ: I have a few, nothing too big. Jake, stay snakey with Pythia. Reserve your
poison tomorrow until I tell you to lay a strike trail around the payload. It might make or break our hold and we want to avoid taking this to checkmate.

  JHoops: hiss hiss venom kiss

  ElementalP: better not miss

  BobTheeQ: Ki, I’m giving you the swap spot but I don’t think we’re going to need it. 90% chance we’ll keep you on Doctor Jack but slot Balor just in case. I want you to have an option in case Fury plays a monster tank.

  Beloveandabow: they won’t. YUNG doesn’t trust Bad Matt yet. he’ll stick to what’s familiar. Klio or bust.

  BobTheeQ: Hard maybe. Recall that I’ve known him longer than you.

  Beloveandabow: you right

  BobTheeQ: P, any thoughts on working with our new DPS? Feeling good about timing your heals on Pharaoh?

  ElementalP: Yup. the timers aren’t too weird and he can sacrifice a special for a one-time self revive so speaking as a healer i am completely in love with this mummy. Like i ship him with Castor for real

  JHoops: hey now

  ElementalP: you heard me

  Beloveandabow: jake you will always be my number one girl-snake

  JHoops: i literally cannot wait to afford therapy

  BobTheeQ: Speaking of mummies: Emilia. How’s the stress? It’s OK to be nervous, we’re here for you.

  Beloveandabow: i mean the team fury post-practice ritual was getting yelled at over voice chat and routinely DMed all day and night to make sure we’re playing to B’s standard so not having that anymore has brought my stress levels down I’d say . . . ​ halfway

  shineedancer: is jake taking care of the other half like a good boy

  ElementalP: hey-ohhh

  JHoops: permission to curl up and die, bob?

  BobTheeQ: Not granted.

  Beloveandabow: . . . he is

  BobTheeQ: I’m gonna change the subject now.

  JHoops: cool idea!

  BobTheeQ: I feel great about where we are as a team. We’ve only had a week to pull this together so feel free to pat yourselves on the back for putting in the work.